Do Something Right For Once
by Lora Perry
Summary: He's never read a parenting book. Maybe he should. Post Season 2 Finale
1. Chapter 1

Summary: He's never read a parenting book. Maybe he should

* * *

><p>Two months after the deaths, after they go back to pretending like life is normal, Jeremy gets sick. Ric has never known how to be a father; never read any of the books. And yet, somehow he ends up as the father to a rag tag gang of teenage heroes; somehow he ends up as the legal guardian to two children, a head strong daughter even more beautiful than her mother and one very sick son, feverish and calling out the names of ghosts of the past.<p>

_He doesn't know if it's Jeremy's new found power or the haze of a fever dream. He can't decide which one is worse._

He doesn't want to replace the Gilbert patriarch and matriarch. He would never try to replace Jenna. He's just trying to be something to these kids (because no matter what they say, that's what they still are.)

Jeremy's been huddled on the couch for three days now, alternating between throwing up, sleeping and scaring the shit out of Alaric. The first day he thought the kid was just trying to skip; falling back into the pattern from the last time he lost everything. But when Ric had gotten home, he'd found Jeremy in the bathroom clutching to a blanket wrapped around him. "Hey" he'd said, oh so nonchalantly, like it was completely normal to be losing your lunch in front of your pseudo stepfather slash guy who had given you a B on your history paper last week.

Ric had only sighed, reaching down to help him up. "c'mon buddy." His hand pressed against Jeremy's sweat drenched t shirt. "I'm going to hopefully assume this isn't a hangover?"

Jeremy had weakly smiled at him.

"Is it bad that I wished it was?"

He had smacked him lightly upside the head for that and chuckled.

Jeremy had groaned. "You gonna throw up again?" Ric had asked cautiously, pausing in the hallway.

"No, it's just the girls. They're playing doctor." Ric had raised an eyebrow at that. "No, man not like that, they're trying to, like, diagnose me."

Anna said that it's a stomach flu and Vicky had just thought that it was pitiful that Jeremy wasn't actually hung-over and Ric really was just thinking this was the kid's stomach fighting back against all the shit he eats.

But that had been two days ago.

* * *

><p>Parenting. He just falls into it. He sleeps in Jenna's bed and wakes up early to ensure he gets hot water and then makes them all breakfast even though Jeremy tends to try to sneak out with pop tarts and dry cereal. Most days he wrangles him back inside, "breakfast the most important meal of the day," and all, while the kids roll their eyes and tell him he's "such a teacher."<p>

Back when he lived by himself, back before possessions and sacrifices of all different varieties he thought of all of them, of Bonnie and Caroline, Elena and Jeremy, even Tyler as these weapons and powers who just happened to be teenagers with curfews and restrictions. He doesn't really know why, because he had taught them all, but it was the way they always had presented themselves, ready for battle, 'forward the light brigade' and all.

Now, now that he lives and protects and does the laundry with two of them he realizes how wrong he was. Because, yes, Caroline could kill him at any moment, quick and efficient, minimizing the blood on her clothes and hair and not feel any remorse about it. But she also wants to go see the new Justin Beiber movie and is being petulant because no one will go with her and the "no compelling unless it's an emergency or Jeremy's about to do something stupid" rule is being enforced completely. She also tends to cry on the Gilbert front porch when she thinks everyone's asleep; Ric has made hot chocolate more than one night and has listened to her talk about her mom, and mother's day picnics, and how much she misses her dad.

And Bonnie may be an all powerful witch, may even be the most powerful, and may be able to destroy the world if she tried, but she also has a D in calculus. She admitted one night after he sat down to talk to her about it, head turned down to play with the sequins on her skirt, that homework had easily been tossed aside when lives had been threatened; when lives had been lost. But she knows what she has to do.

Shortly after that the "no magic unless it's an emergency and getting bad grades does not count as an emergency" rule is put into effect and Alaric finds a tutor for Bonnie.

Tyler he always thought the least about, at least before he turned and left and came back and lost his mentor and friend. Now he keeps a steady eye on the wayward boy, stocks up on oreos and hot dogs for full moons, when the kid is in a permanent fit of starvation for three days after.

He has Damon grading paper with him, glad that he focused on the 20th century this semester. Damon sits beside him, sipping scotch, mumbling about how the students would have thought differently about things if they'd actually been there. Woodstock, trench warfare, roaring twenties, the young glamorize what Damon tells him was really just a bunch of adolescents having ideas and then growing up and forgetting about them.

Matt, he teaches how to whittle stakes and make vervain shots and how the Cold War was established and why it's important. The young man stares him right in the eye one night and asks "why do you do it Mr. S? Why do you stay? Cause this stuff, it's crazy man, and like, I'm barely keeping from screaming. And you, man, you just hold it all together so well, and I don't know if I can." Ric had only sighed, not really sure of his answer.

He wonders if he'll ever have an answer.

Elena, sweet Elena, who is strong with her mother's eyes and her father's streak of madness and her brother's penchant for getting into trouble, cries in her room every night, not even bothering to hide it; not even trying to deny it. Jenna, John, Grayson, Miranda, four parents, gone and buried, left to mingle in the soil while she trudges on, alone. Stefan's departure hit her hard, in the stomach, and though he tries to tell her that the wind getting knocked out of her is the only way to remind her lungs how much they like the taste of air, he can't get all the words out; the pain and despair sketched like an artist's pencil across her face too much for him to bare.

Damon tries, but he doesn't know how, has forgotten, truly what it is to be 17 and so in love and in so much pain. Some nights, Alaric looks the other way while Damon holds her while she cries until she falls asleep, pretending to be unaware of the man nestled in Elena's bed. He's not a father, hasn't read all the books, but he knows that that is something he's not supposed to allow. Woops.

He's never planned on being a father; doesn't even know the titles of the good parenting books. But he does know that's he's got a feverish kid on the couch and a girl with a broken heart upstairs and there's only so much good chicken soup can do for either.


	2. Chapter 2

His fever spikes to 104. They can't get it down.

That they have to go to the hospital is inevitable. Jeremy is just far too miserable and Alaric is far too terrified for there to be any other option.

He calls Damon and has him come over to watch Elena. The Salvatore brother raises an eyebrow at him and the baby sitting duty he's been assigned but it's at that moment Jeremy starts throwing up blood. Anything Damon would have said or argued becomes invalid.

The ride to the hospital is silent, Jer attempting to fall back asleep in the passenger seat. His pale face is resting against the window, slow breaths trickling out of his mouth, out of tune. Ric fiddles with the air conditioning, calloused fingers from crossbows tracing the leather of the interior, the soft underside of the steering wheel. He desperately wants Jeremy to say that's he's all better and that they can go home, turn the car around _[and go back three months and save everyone and then maybe they can all go for a picnic]_ but instead the kid takes another jagged breath and maybe even whimpers.

He'd deny it if he was ever asked.

* * *

><p>At the hospital they take Jer away from him, rushing him beyond closed doors as soon as he says that the patient's name is Jeremy Gilbert. They leave him with paper work to fill out that he has no idea how to do; questions about great aunts and second cousins and how many vaccinations he had when he was six. He's only know the kid for a year and he doubts that the fact that he sees dead people is going to fit anywhere on the medical history sheet. He's reaching for his phone to call Elena when he glances up at the receptionist desk. The Gilbert legacy serves him well here, apparently; a nurse in pink scrubs with light blue sneakers walks over to him and smiles.<p>

"You came in with the Gilbert boy right?"

"Yes, yes I did, I'm Alaric…"

"Saltzman, yes I know. We've all kept an eye on Grayson's kids after everything."

Ric doesn't know if he should be thankful or scared or angry. That someone else is watching the kids backs is always good, but he also knows that he's not the tip top shape guardian, still isn't sure if how they went about him getting custody of the children is even legal in all fifty states. But Ric can admit that he feels a little angry too; that in a town where so many people profess to have loved Grayson and Miranda; where they continuously say they look at Elena and Jeremy as their own children; why no one else stepped up to the plate after Jenna and John died.

(Jenna had even told him once, laying in her bed, her fingers lazily tracing stars and hearts across his chest, that after the funeral, after the last of the casseroles had been eaten, the town had seemingly disappeared; no more stop bys, no more "_is there anything we can do_". They all had just gone on with their lives while Jeremy and Elena got stuck in neutral.)

"I shouldn't be worried should I?" He instead says- his smile the one he uses to woo over mothers at PTA meetings.

"Not at all, you seem a good fit. You just appeared a bit loss with the medical forms."

"Ahh, yeah, I. ..I was about to call his sister and…"

"Don't bother. His father tended to keep all their information pretty up to date, helped pass the time when he got bored."

"He worked here? I thought he had his own practice in downtown?"

"Yeah, he did, but when his patient came here, he came here. Full rights at the hospital. Dr. Gilbert just cared, ya know? Half our patients were crying when he and his wife passed on."

Alaric only nods. The town's saviors and redeemers, gone too young; and he, left with their protégé and prodigy. And he is so going to screw it up.

"But anyway, I just came over here to tell you that you needn't fill out those forms. We've got him mostly up to date, and if there's anything missing, his pediatrician is on call tonight, Dr. Sterm, and he'll be probably able to fill in any holes we might have. So you just sit tight, and I'll come find you when they've got something for you."

"I…I had wanted to go with him. He's been saying some pretty weird stuff all day from the fever, and I wanted him to have a constant presence." Also, didn't want the kid to start talking about the ghosts he saw, his two dead ex-girlfriends who keep diagnosing him with different things.

Last night, before Jer's fever had spiked again, Anna had decided it was actually the plague- something she has seen with her own two eyes. Apparently Vicki had just rolled her eyes and gone back to massaging Jeremy's hair.

"Are you sure you actually see ghosts and don't just have a vivid male imagination?" Damon had asked after Jer had recanted what the girls had been saying.

Alaric had snorted into his stack of papers.

Now, back at the hospital, the nurse just smiles at him again. "I'll be sure to let Dr. Sterm know that you're out here and want to be with Jeremy."

"Thank you," he says, though he knows in the back of his head they are only doing it because the kid whose now his is also a prince of this town, the youngest and the most broken (oh, if only they knew how Tyler was now, held together by the glue of Caroline, chains and Ric's spaghetti).

* * *

><p>He calls his own mom, scared. He says that Jeremy is sick, real sick, and the doctor have taken him away, and they won't let him go back with him, and he was throwing up for three days, and that's bad, he should have gotten there sooner, shouldn't he have? He doesn't realize that he actually forgot to tell her about the whole 'became a guardian to two kids' thing until she asks if Jeremy is his lover. The sputter that comes out of his mouth could have been featured in one of those stupid comedy movies the boys watch.<p>

The _he's my kid_ but really _he's my dead girlfriend's_ but really it's _my dead girlfriend's dead sister's kid_, but the daughter is actually his step-daughter because Isobel… and _mom I need you_, escapes him in all in one breath.

She sighs, "oh Alaric" escaping from her lips, the way she usually reserves for his older sister.

The doctor appears at that same moment, white coat trailing behind him.

He almost hangs up on his mother before uttering a quick goodbye.

The doctor asks if Jeremy has been sick lately. Ric wants to respond with the question of 'does dying and then being brought back by your girlfriend count?' and 'can that lower your immune system?'

Instead he says no.

* * *

><p>It's the stomach flu. The freaking stomach flu.<p>

A _bad_ case of the stomach flu the doctor reiterates. As if that makes the last three days any better. If that made the hour wait any lesser. If that made the dread and fear any less palatable.

He's going to kill this kid.

They're going to admit him though; dehydration a concern, the vomiting another.

(the blood that he'd been throwing up was from how raw his throat was—not from his stomach ripping away from its place and doing a dance)

They're settling him in; a private room on the third floor for the Gilbert heir.

Ric sighs and pulls out his phone, ready to call the troops, kids, Scooby gang (he hates Damon, he hates him) and give them the update.

He's already got messages.

Caroline is at the house, baking brownies and doing linens. She also ordered dinner for Elena, and made Tyler start his English assignment.

Damon is begging him to take Barbie vampire away.

Matt is wondering if he should be on Bonnie patrol, because _"she like goes psycho when J's hurt, Mr.S."_

Five missed calls from Bonnie.

(four from his mother).


	3. Chapter 3

When he finally makes it to Jeremy's room, he's calmed the troops, soothed Bonnie's worries and placated Elena. He hasn't called back his mother. He might never. He'd rather face another apocalypse that deal with her right now.

The kid is lying in the bed, staring out the window; he doesn't even glance over to the door when Alaric walks in.

"You okay kid?" Dumb question really, because everybody is always okay when they're in a hospital bed.

"Dude." The kid responds, still not turning towards him. Alaric wonders if they gave the younger man pain medication. "I see dead people."

"Yeah buddy, I know." He never could watch the whole of _Sixth Sense_ so he doesn't know really what to say right here, if he should just pull out his best Bruce Willis impression and go with it. Instead, Jeremy turns to him, eyes bright and hands grasping tight at the metal bars of the bed, white knuckles stark and unforgiving.

"No, man, you don't understand. They're everywhere."

There's a woman who keeps screeching that she has to pick her son up from soccer practice, the blood bubbling out of her lips as she paces in front of Jere's bed making the kid wince every time he gets a look at her.

He's even paler now, in the bed.

Next door is a five year old who wanted to play with her father's tools and the one that made the _brrr _sound when he had assembled her doll house. She wants her doll now.

_You don't want to know, man. It's bad._

In his bathroom is an 80 year old man, mumbling to himself as he tears strip of skin off his stomach.

The kid is now a constant shade of green that has nothing to do with the flu he's fighting.

_Could you, like, get me out of here? _Jeremy ends up asking. Alaric knows that for the kid, it's considered a true moment of weakness, that for him, now firmly a member of the supernatural club, to not be able to control his ability makes him hate himself just a little bit more. Alaric wants to comment on that, say how proud he is of Jere for holding himself together so well in a way that so few would be able; that if he was the one seeing dead bodies, mutilated bodies, he'd be in a padded room by now sobbing.

But he doesn't say that. Or anything related. He just nods, stands up, and goes in search of a doctor, a nurse, a shaman maybe, knowing this town.

* * *

><p>They let him leave, the doctors and nurses glaring at Alaric with every hesitating step that Jeremy takes towards the waiting car. It's just this side of leaving against medical advice; something the doctor had repeated numbers of times. <em>But it's not <em>was Alaric's only response. It wasn't, yes. But only just. The kid can barely stand, let alone walk, and he's shaking, but Alaric knows that's mostly from his nerves being so out of focus from all the dead and dying and less from the dehydration, nausea and persistent fever.

He'll take him home, lay him on the couch and dose him with hospital strength antibiotics and glucose. Caroline has already stocked the fridge with Gatorade and Pedialyte ("and, I took the labels off, so he can't be all grumpy and say he's not a baby and not take it!" she had giddily told him) and someone assured him that laundry had been done. No word yet on how many of his work shirts have returned to their original color instead of pink. He's a teacher, not a laundress.

He'll take the kid home, and he'll be babied and fed and pampered and he'll begin to heal. Because the Scooby Gang always survives, thought at times they limp and they bleed. They're just a bunch of kids with superpowers and super stories and a lot of emotions and drama. But they're a messed up family too, and baby brother is sick.

* * *

><p>Jeremy begins to recover. Slowly.<p>

One day, Alaric comes home from work to find all of his kids sprawled out in the living room. They're watching some hooky horror movie that, of course, has vampires in it. He can only wonder at the discussions they've gotten into. That one time Twilight was brought home even Caroline got offended. And yet, for all its awful fake blood and costume choices, the movie they are now watching has all of their attention. The living room is silent.

Matt's face is scrunched up in tight concentration, watching the flickering images on the screen. It's as if he is trying to gain hints for the coming days and war. His blue eyes stretch over to Ric and he smiles before turning back to the movie and Ric can almost see the battle plans developing in the younger man's head.

The solider. No one would ever perceive of Matt as the solider, not with his baby blues and his blonde hair and his innocence, but that's what he is, and he's no longer such an innocent (none of them are innocent). He is strong and resilient, but scarred heavily where no one but a trusted few can see. His gaze is on the television screen but he keeps one hand tight on Caroline's thigh- not possessive though, no, not Matt. Rather, it is an anchor, a tether to keep him from drifting like so many with the blood he shares tend to do.

Alaric lets his gaze shift away from Lt. Donovan and his ever calculating, ever appraising stare and on to sweet Caroline beside him. She seems unaware, or rather, unaffected by the vice grip that Matt has on her. She knows, Ric realizes with a start, what that physical contact must mean to Matt.

"_They were all babies together"_ whispers the haunted voice of Jenna in his ear. "_They all grew up on top of each other."_ (he may not have Jere's power, but he still feels, sees, hears her here. _Always_)

Caroline knows Matt, all of him; the scar on his left palm from some half-brain summer adventure he and Tyler had once concocted and delivered; to the small burn behind his right ear from one particularly bad boyfriend of his mom's. But before, before she had only ever known those scars second hand, through Elena, as the best friend nodding dutifully on pink and flower bedspreads. Relearning them as Matt's girlfriend—retracing the raised and marred skin with heightened receptors beneath the pads on her own fingers—well she ended up hurting as well, sobbing alone in the Salvatore basement.

So Alaric knows that she'll let Matt squeeze the life out of her while they watch movies (_if there was any life left to squeeze, _Alaric thinks darkly, and perhaps, a little bitterly) and she'll only ever roll her eyes. She'll feign that she's scared when something frightening happens on screen, even though she's seen worse in her own backyard (in her own mother's eyes). She'll bake brownies because Jeremy is sick and she'll get upset when there are too many carbs at dinner.

But sometimes, Ric catches glances -out of the corner of his eye, or when they are alone on the front porch, a blanket draped over her shoulders more for comfort than for warmth, a cup of hot chocolate in her hand-of the exhaustion. The exhaustion that she keeps locked beneath iron doors of pom-poms, perfume and smiles. One day, he'll tell her to unlock those doors; this week, and weeks like them, he's glad he knows not of the key.

Elena had Jeremy's head in her lap, running her fingers through his hair, tracing nonsense patterns on his scalp. Ric wonders if this is what Jeremy's ghosts had done all those nights ago, when the sickness was undefined and roaring it's head with a might; he wonders if the Gilbert parents had ever done it; he wonders if he ever should.

Her finger nails are painted, and Ric takes it as a good sign. It means for just a moment, she focused on something other than Stefan and the departure that tore her apart and _bring him back, please bring him back._ Elena smiles up at him and gives him a thumbs up, rolling her eyes at the half cast lids of her little brother.

There's questions he wants to ask; what's the kid's temperature, did he eat today, did he sleep, are the _girls_ (always with a connotation now, a strange distinction between the living and the dead) bothering him—but he stops himself, letting the peace lay undisturbed. Jere shifts in his half conscious slumber but other than that his presence seems noticed but unaffecting, and Alaric is happy for that.

He'll need to check on Bonnie, and how she's doing on the Calculus homework assigned this week. Jonathan, or Mr. Grant as the students _should_ refer to him as, said she's doing better, struggling with a few concepts, but no longer in danger of failing. Small victories in an epic battle between him and the kids classes; sometimes he thinks the Tyler really just wants to see the chemistry building burn.

* * *

><p>Things return to normal. But not really, because normal has always been four degrees west of where they are, but it returns to there. Jeremy starts not doing his homework because he's a sixteen year old with a girlfriend instead of not doing it because he's dying or in mourning. Ric makes breakfast and chastises Elena for wearing skirts that are too short but she only ever rolls her eyes because everyone "knows she's taken"- but she always changes though; to appease him or because at heart she's just a girl who needs to know someone still watches over him, he doesn't really care.<p>

Damon still appears at the house at odd hours to grade papers with him, offsetting the bleak topics of trench warfare or nuclear bombs with tales of misbegotten post-modern poets and authors in speakeasies. His eyebrow does that thing that it does while he speaks of sparkling dresses and "want to know who really influenced Fitzgerald?" but Ric only laughs and sips at the tumbler, etching comments on to valiant half ass attempt essays with red ink that only bleeds a little.

Matt works at the grill still, but Ric watches his hours and makes sure he sleeps and eats and at least pretends to act like a teenage. Caroline helps with that.

The cringing rule of "No sex in the house ever, I don't care if it will end a curse, no sex" soon comes into effect. They don't like him for a week after that, none of them. Even Damon, who said you could never be careful when it came to counter curses. Ric is petty and puts vervain in his scotch.

Normalcy is stifling because they all wait with baited breaths for the next crisis to slither up next to one of them and snap at their ankle. Diligent and cautious is all they can be, sending out feelers trying to find Stefan, despairing when it comes apparent he does not want to be found.

Every full moon is a challenge, the young man who Ric loves to tease about his obsession with 70's rock torn to pieces by a ravaging beast within is a devastating thing to hear, let alone observe. Those are some of the nights he finds Caroline on the front porch, Matt on the roof- just looking at the stars, desperation in his stature because he can't fix everything, and hot chocolate can cure a lot, but it can't erase the agony that echoes from the woods or the whimpers with the sunrise.

But then _Teen Wolf _premiers on MTV and some of the biggest brightest smiles he's ever seen on Tyler begin to appear.

"Dude, they got it all wrong!"

"Well maybe you should write to them, Lassie, and tell them the real thing." Damon had responded, his drawl slow but not nearly as acidic as it could be.

Tyler had barred his teeth and looked down at the remnants of the scar still on the Salvatore's arm.

It's the only thing that really can ever shut Damon up.

If Alaric ever stopped for long enough in his day, in between teaching (wait, he had a job? A real job? One that doesn't involve crossbows but does involve showing up at 7 am?) and being a pseudo big brother/father/best friend/hunter/defender perhaps he'd be able to take a step back and realize what has happened without him meaning too. He probably would never have had realized it if it hadn't been for another one of the teachers, Mary Clarke, (_Mrs. Clarke, Tyler, not "Old Lady Clark"!)_ after he'd stopped by to pick up Jeremy's homework one day before things had gone back to normal.

_"You know Alaric," _she had said, handing over the small stack of papers for the convalescing teen on the couch, trying to convince Damon to let him have some of the scotch, "_I know that you're Elena and Jeremy's guardian, but we both know that's not all you are. You've become the new Gilbert, the new patriarch of this town, making sure all those kids are happy, healthy and hale."_

Ric had tried to dissuade her, that he wasn't a Gilbert, he wasn't a patriarch; didn't she understand, he hadn't read any parenting books, he flunked out of Calculus in college, he drinks way too much when the girls sleep over at Bonnie's, his best friend is a vampire for Christ's sake; he's no hero, he's just the guy who loved a girl too much who ended up leaving him; he's just the man who loved a woman with his whole heart only for the word sacrifice to finally have a literally breath stealing definition in his life; he's no upstanding citizen, he has guns and tranquilizers in the trunk, a cross bow under his desk, he's pretty sure Damon has outstanding warrants in at least three states; he's just the guy who came to haunt vampires and ended up defending them; just the guy who makes breakfast and is lenient with curfew but never with grades; just the guy who is somehow glue to a fractured picture—some of the pieces don't fit exactly how they used too, but if you stand far enough away, it still looks whole.

"_Whatever you say, Alaric." _Mary had said, "_You can't deceive yourself forever though."_

Maybe he can't, but right now he doesn't have time for Old Lady Clark's ramblings. He's got dinner to make and homework to enforce. And maybe he'll stop at the book store and finally buy a parenting book. Maybe.


End file.
